‘Gotham’ Villain Lineup to Include Mr. Freeze

Gotham, Fox’s upcoming drama based on DC comics characters, revolves around Detective Jim Gordon (Ben McKenzie) as he deals with the crime running rampant in his hometown. However, the series has also been heavily promoted as an origin story for many well-known villains in the Batman universe – Selina Kyle/Catwoman and Oswald Cobblepot/Penguin, among several other well-known Batman baddies – as well as the original character, Fish Mooney (Jada Pinkett Smith).

At San Diego Comic-Con this past weekend, the pilot debuted to the public — check out our thoughts on it — and a new cinematic trailer for the show’s network premiere was revealed. In addition, it was confirmed that a certain villain would be pulled out of the cooler. (Sorry, couldn’t resist.)

In an interview with Digital Spy, executive producer of Gotham Danny Cannon, who talked last month about wanting to introduce Mr. Freeze, said the iceman will appear on the show. Cannon, who also directed the premiere episode, couldn’t shed any light on when that may be — or whether there will be hints to Mr. Freeze and his cryogenic technology leading up to an official introduction.

In terms of the science behind Mr. Freeze, Cannon said his time as an executive producer on CSI gave him some ideas how to reinvent the iceman’s origin story to fit on Gotham:

Without giving too much away — because I’m not allowed to — the great thing about working on a ‘CSI’ procedural show for so long was we worked with so many experts — specialists in each field. There’s a lot of things I picked up along the way.

With Gotham focusing more on the realistic police procedural aspect of Gotham City — rather than the superhero caped crusader side — it’s been a goal of both Cannon and showrunner Bruno Heller, to create believable origin stories for all the villains featured on the series.

For Mr. Freeze, Cannon has a few ideas in mind. Read Cannon’s full quote:

My first conversation with Bruno Heller about the villains in this show is always that they need to be very credible and relatable and the science behind them needs to be real…So I had a couple of stories that I’d held onto — real, true stories — and one of them just related to Mr. Freeze. I know a real way to create an origin story.

Though it doesn’t sound as if Mr. Freeze’s introduction on Gotham will pull from the comic books, it’s entirely possible Cannon and Heller could weave real stories in with the mythos of Dr. Victor Fries. Freeze has always started off as a scientist who is the victim of a failed cryogenic experiment; in DC’s New 52, he accidentally douses himself in cryo chemicals as a result of a violent outburst.

With Freeze’s history in the comics heavily influenced by science, it’s entirely feasible to introduce him to the realistic world of Gotham. Fellow DC show, The CW’s Arrow, included a body-altering drug in its series that provided a realistic explanation to superhuman powers. Cannon’s history of working with experts who know more about science than the origins of Mr. Freeze will at least lead to a, hopefully, more believable incarnation of the iceman than Arnold Schwarzenegger in Batman & Robin (not that we don’t love his puns).

However, the real question pertaining to Mr. Freeze joining Gotham isn’t whether his origin story will be realistic, it’s whether he’ll get lost among the very long list of already confirmed DC villains. At least, it’s worth noting, Cannon didn’t specify whether Freeze would appear in Gotham’s first season or later on down the line.